State Library OER Grant Opportunity for Instructors

The FY24 budget for the state of Illinois appropriated $3 million in funding that the Illinois State Library has made for authoring, revising/remixing, updating, or creating ancillary materials for OER textbooks. The Open Educational Resource grant has a close turnaround time, with a maximum award of $150,000. Multiple grants can be submitted from the same institution. Applications are due to the Illinois State Library by April 1, 2024. To compile and process the grant at UIS, instructor grant proposals are due March 1st.

We know that is a tight deadline, so collaboration will be key! On February 16, 2024, 11 a.m. to noon, join Emily Boles and Pattie Piotrowski, Dean of the Library, to learn about the grant and brain storm proposal ideas. This is a great opportunity to reduce the cost of education for our students.

Grant Requirements

This grant is measuring success by the amount of money that students save through the program.

1. Instructors must teach a course with the OER textbook by the end of the Spring 2026 term.
2. Data must be collected on the number of students who enrolled in the course(s) using the OER textbook in order to calculate cost savings enabled by the grant.
3. All materials authored, remixed, or updated must be licensed with a license of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International / CC-BY 4.0 International.

UIS Call for Proposals

The Illinois State Library administers and awards grants only to libraries. The grant must be submitted by the Brookens Library on behalf of the university. Brookens Library meets State Library certification requirements.

Due to the quick turnaround time for the grant, we are looking for proposals that meet these criteria:

• Instructors who have already adopted an OER textbook in their course and would like to update the text and/or create openly licensed ancillary materials (slide decks, quizzes, assignments, video lectures, etc...) to accompany the text.
• Instructors who are interested in adopting an OER textbook and would like to update the text and/or create openly licensed ancillary materials for the text.

Proposal Requirements

Interested instructors should complete the grant application, Attachment 1, and Attachment 2.

1. OER Grant Application (instructors complete items 6, 7, 10, 11, and 12)
2. Attachment 1: Course and OER Information
3. Attachment 2: Signed Agreement to Adopt OER

We suggest including budget requests for summer stipends for faculty workload and time. Due to the short turnaround time, the UIS non-instructional assignment approval process cannot be completed.

If instructors wish to have support for department employees or GA/graduate hourly employees, those position title, rate of pay with benefits, and anticipated hours should be included in the budget (question 12). For support with areas in which the campus does not have expertise or support -- copyright, copyediting, peer review, graphic creation -- a consultant should be identified by name and fee amounts. COLRS will provide support for the accessibility and instructional design requirements of the grant. Brookens Library staff will direct the project and manage the funds awarded.

Submit these documents by March 1st to Pattie Piotrowski (ppiot2@uis.edu) to allow submissions to be compiled, an application narrative composed, and the grant to be processed by the UIS Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, which requires two weeks for that work.

Important Dates

• Instructor grant applications due to Pattie Piotrowski by March 1, 2024.
• Compiled Grant due to UIS Office of Research and Sponsored Programs for processing by March 15, 2024.
• Compiled and approved grant due to Illinois State Library by April 1, 2024.
• Funds awarded by June 30, 2024.
• Funds must be spent by June 30, 2026.